Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Tag team

Tucked in a corner between the Bombay's lousiest lounge bar called P.U.L.S.E. and the HDFC Bank ATM on Hill Road, N/books, Sales & Library should immediately be declared a national treasure.

Charges are 150 per month, 1 book at a time and 250 bucks refundable deposit. You can change as may times as you wish. To a somewhat energetic reader like me, that works out to about 25 bucks per book.

And here is the list of the books I've borrowed so far :

Artemis Fowl, The Eternity Code - Eoin Colfer

The Alchemy of Desire - Tarun Tejpal

Franny & Zooey - JD Salinger

Portrait of an artist as an old man - Joseph Heller

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

Children of Hurin - JRR Tolkien

Love in a Blue Time - Hanif Kurieshi

Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer

Needful Things - Stephen King

Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri

Maximum City - Suketu Mehta

Not your run-of-the-mill street corner kabadiwala cum circulating library, eh? In addition the books are in pristine, virtually new condition.

I was actually thinking about not letting out this secret to anybody, but you know, what-the-hell ...

The book I am reading now is obviously the last one in that list. Hasn't quite made up my mind up on this one. Definitely better than Shantaram, definitely worse than Sacred Games. But overall, not very defining to a forced resident, like me.

Maximum City is what exactly you would expect in a book oriented towards wide-eyed incredulous Americans. It reinforces all the typical stereotypes which you read or hear about without actually being there. And the constant name-dropping gets to you after a while. The parts I really liked, as compared to the usual underworld / bollywood / dance bar / Shiv Sena routine, are reminiscences about his childhood.

@ Rimi

Long time. See above for my honest take on MC.

And I wrote the review. Could I get another topic now? That seems to be the only way I manage to write now-a-days :)